Mattoon

I just hope all this shit doesn't overshadow what has become an amazing achievement for the English team.

Fyi this is all happening dahn saaaarf

[emoji38] I hope he's picked up a serious injury. A grown man, ffs.

We've raised a generation of self entitled nobheads basically, I'm not saying they're all like that because that's what's annoying me about the "All England Fans are the same and we actively want you's to lose" mantra. Yes we've got a load of pricks causing havoc, wrecking public and private property and throwing beer around, it's not indicative of England Fans, it's the Ingurrrland "fans" that jump on the bandwagon when it's going well and only own an England shirt, maybe a 2018 Man City shirt and an old Chelsea shirt in the wardrobe on top of an early 2000s Man U shirt. A bit of nice weather, some beer and a mob mentality is a disaster waiting to happen. Like HTT I stay far away from public gatherings of said nob heads when the game is on, I've been hosting World Cup days at my gaff for 5 or 6 friends and it's been a quality tournament. Don't let pictures on social media and in the papers form your opinion on England Fans as a collective, as NUFC fans you know how easy it is to get caught in a clichè.

Most of those are not "England Fans" they're just dickheads with an excuse to get pissed because everyone's watching the England game. But don't let that stop the agenda of cellulite Sally being the face of English fan hooliganism. Most of what I have witnessed has been passionate and respectful.

Exactly how I wanted it to play out, a gruelling 120 minutes of football and a draining penalty shoot-out won by Croatia. Nervous but excited for Wednesday night!

One of Rafa's close friends Micky Mellon's daughter goes to Cheerleading with my daughter, the Mrs keeps trying to put it out there that I need to meet him at some point. He's a sound bloke too

My head is pounding, genuinely mentally and physically exhausted after watching that. My mate was spewing in my back garden after we won it was that tense [emoji23]

We are asking for £15m for Ritchie apparently, If you can negotiate them down, the hit wouldn't be so bad. In Rafa's hands, Townsend was a hell of a player, I think he could do far more with him than he can with Ritchie. And had he stayed with us and learnt from Rafa he'd be a £30m player, right now, at Palace, after that season I'd argue he's closer to a £13m player Well, one thing you can be sure of with our negotiating team, we aren't about to overbid for a player so you can rest assured there. £3m and that's our final offer, we won't be held to ransom! "We tried".

We are asking for £15m for Ritchie apparently, If you can negotiate them down, the hit wouldn't be so bad. In Rafa's hands, Townsend was a hell of a player, I think he could do far more with him than he can with Ritchie. And had he stayed with us and learnt from Rafa he'd be a £30m player, right now, at Palace, after that season I'd argue he's closer to a £13m player

Disappointed not to win and continue the form we had but the outcome is the better option of the two. It was a strange match, I didn't want us to lose but I didn't want us to finish top either. It was a nothing game and we treated it as such, the "B" team didn't exactly cover themselves in glory, Dier, Delph, Vardy and Pickford were all poor, Trent-Arnold and Loftus-Cheek both faded out of the game and we weren't the same at the back once Stones went off. Our best team should be enough to see off Columbia and hopefully take us to the Semis. Croatia will destroy us if we make it that far but I'd be more than happy with getting that far.

£30m for Townsend? [emoji23] Someone at Palace needs to lay off the crack.

Genuinely Euro '96 was the last time I had any confidence in an England team to be anything but also-rans

This for me, it can't be said enough how huge that victory was after everything that went before it. We should have been home and dry in the first half an hour but as it was with so much adversity to keep our heads up and keep going until the last whistle was pure grit. Refreshingly different from England teams gone by.

Fucking joke

Cash cows are business which produce stable, predicatable and high-quality cashflows. Football clubs rarely are and NUFC certainly isn't. MA is not beyond sharp practice, there are plenty of stories out there, but if he needs to extract cash from NUFC, he can. He just repays a bit of the shareholder loan. He's not going to set up a convoluted Balti pie scheme for a few grand. With the merchendise, almost certainly SD providing the service will ensure greater profits. The only question is how these are shared. All of these are minor points, the real issue is that the club has utterly failed to exploit its commercial potential and continues to run itself with a skeleton crew operating at the whim of a barely interested control freak. It wouldn't surprise me to find out Ashley was siphoning every available penny out of the club, including the Balti pies. However you are correct, the main point is exploiting the club to advertise his tat brand without compensation. Interest free loans he owes to himself are a smoke screen for multi-million pound advertising for free on a worldwide stage, this is what needs to be addressed if we are to compete at a higher level.

100% any budget is inclusive of contract length wages, funny that's never factored back in once a player is moved on before his contract is up?

Who, me? I haven't even posted in an age??

You can try and fool yourself all you want but we know the drill, we'll monitor, prepare, low ball and "not be held hostage" until the last week of the window. We'll get in our 32nd and 34th choice winger/striker and a couple of loans to make it look like we tried and Rafa will do his best until January where we'll rinse and repeat our tired old "Winter window holds no value" Rafa will keep us safe because he's a world class manager and then he'll walk when he's free from his shackles and no one will blame him except Ashley, it'll get spun in the papers that we did all we could to keep him and most of the supporters will lap it up. I pray and I hope it'll be different but to believe it would be different to any other of the 11 seasons under the fat bastard is futile and bordering on insanity.

Good piece that, I think people are underestimating this England team, under Southgate they seem so much more drilled and much more of a team than they have been in previous tournaments.

Didn't expect us to lowball...So fucking frustrating, just pay the going rate for once. I know it's stupid to start with a high bid, but we always refuse go more than 1p over our first offer. Nothing wrong with starting low it’s just how we progress from there which is the problem. Progress, chortle

Or Hayden is moving down to 5th choice, which is probably about right tbf. As it stands, if Shelvey or Diame were to get injured, we would only have 1 back up midfielder in Hayden/Merino (depending on which stepped in). That's not enough for comfort. We had 5 this season with Saivet and Rafa seemed to decide in January he only needed 4 tbf. Or he thought he had a replacement lined up and that rug was pulled after the sale?

I'm quite patient me, I usually get through at least 12 paragraphs before I realise it's morning. Cheers HTT keep em coming

Totally off topic but I just arrived in Gateshead for my first ever visit to Newcastle, my daughter is cheerleading at the metro centre tomorrow but I'll be taking a visit to St James' in the daytime.